Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Have Filed for a Union Election

After the UAW’s stand-up strike against the Big 3, the union pledged to embark on an aggressive campaign to organize nonunion automakers. Today, the UAW announced it is filing an election at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, Volkswagen plant.

Albany Times Union

Autoworkers in Tennessee are voting on whether to unionize their plant. (Michael P. Farrell / Albany Times Union via Getty Images)


Autoworkers will vote on whether to form a union at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the company’s only factory on the planet without a union.

On Monday, the United Auto Workers (UAW) filed for an election to represent all 4,300 of the plant’s hourly employees, after the union said a “supermajority” of workers signed union cards in one hundred days. Unlike in the last three failed drives at this plant, this time, the UAW has publicly laid out its strategy to support worker-led organizing across the nonunion auto and battery plant sector at companies like Toyota, Rivian, Hyundai, Mercedes, and Volkswagen.

The strategy is for workers to announce their organizing drives once they have reached 30 percent on signed union authorization cards, hold rallies with community and labor supporters at the 50 percent mark, and demand voluntary recognition when they reach 70 percent, having grown their organizing committee to include workers from every shift and job classification. If the company refuses, the workers file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.

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